BOC: Donington: the real deal

[Doug Pearson]

On Wed, 7 May 2003 12:45:33 EDT, Ted Jackson <tojackso at LIBRARY.SYR.EDU>
wrote:

>http://www.macdigital-uk.com/boc/blueskybag/georgegeranios/index.htm
>
>Here's George Geranios' explanation of the ill-fabled Donington concert.
>It's a great read!

Indeed it is!  Most telling is the description (see below) of *exactly* how
(and how easy it is for them to do so) certain headliners will screw over
the opening acts (in that context, the knobs on the dbx165 could just as
easily be labeled "suck", "mute", "muffle", and "distort").  There is a
special place in hell for audio engineers who use their talents for evil
(like that) instead of good ...

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com

I had high hopes for a fine show, but as we began I noticed that the system
sounded much quieter than the day before and the dynamics were limited.
Nothing sounded quite right. At one point I became quite disgusted and took
a little walk to my left, the center of the mixing platform, and took a
look at the system drive racks. Yes, there it was, a DBX 165 Stereo
Limiter, and, by golly, it was kicking back about 12db on every peak. And
it was attached to my mix!

I turned to the Rocksound system tech (the sound man for the Scorpions, by
the way) and asked, "What the hell is this?" I got a reply burned into my
brain even these many years later: "You know how it is!" (Imagine a German-
tinged accent and a condescending smile).